Jeff Conner knew he had to talk to school administrators when he learned his daughter was shown a video in science class that said evolutionary researchers were not scientists, and when she was assigned an essay about her beliefs on evolution and creation.

At his daughter's middle school in Gull Lake, near Kalamazoo, two seventh-grade science instructors were teaching intelligent design -- a belief that the complexity of the universe is evidence of an intelligent cause behind it.

"I wasn't happy about it because they were teaching this as science and it isn't," said Conner, a Michigan State University professor who researches evolutionary science, and believes intelligent design is too close to creationism.

The case was one of several across the country that, 80 years after the Scopes trial, has renewed the passionate debate about what public schools should and should not teach about the origins of life.

Evolution is taught in many public schools, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 made lessons in creationism unconstitutional.

Since then, the intelligent design movement has gained momentum and it, along with other critics of evolution, has caused controversy in public schools in 31 states, including Michigan.

Classroom instruction and textbook usage is under siege as school leaders, scientists, politicians and people of faith continue to debate the origin of life.